GUIDING LIGHT: New methods that employ light to reveal and control neural activity are enabling researchers to study individual circuits in animals—work that should also lead to a better understanding of how the human brain functions.
Image: Alfred T. Kamajian
In Brief
- Neuroscientists have traditionally studied the function of the brain by stimulating and recording the activity of single nerve cells with electrodes. But this method is indirect, making analyses of specific neurons very difficult.
- The emerging field of optogenetics, which combines genetic engineering with light to observe and control groups of neurons, is allowing researchers to scrutinize individual neural circuits—an approach that will revolutionize the study of brain function.
In 1937 the great neuroscientist Sir Charles Scott Sherrington of the University of Oxford laid out what would become a classic description of the brain at work. He imagined points of light signaling the activity of nerve cells and their connections. During deep sleep, he proposed, only a few remote parts of the brain would twinkle, giving the organ the appearance of a starry night sky. But at awakening, “it is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance,” Sherrington reflected. “Swiftly the head-mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns.”
Although Sherrington probably did not realize it at the time, his poetic metaphor contained an important scientific idea: that of the brain revealing its inner workings optically. Understanding how neurons work together to generate thoughts and behavior remains one of the most difficult open problems in all of biology, largely because scientists generally cannot see whole neural circuits in action. The standard approach of probing one or two neurons with electrodes reveals only tiny fragments of a much bigger puzzle, with too many pieces missing to guess the full picture. But if one could watch neurons communicate, one might be able to deduce how brain circuits are laid out and how they function. This alluring notion has inspired neuroscientists to attempt to realize Sherrington’s vision.
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6 Comments
Add CommentLUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisit is interesting/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissome people experience such things. are hallucinations just extrasensory powers and not madness ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have seen on TV that an officer of the law can actually bring a criminal with a gun in his hand. To become totally incapcitated with a series of flashing lights. In a cantraption about the size of a car's headlight with various LEDs
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear Sir,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRefer my request regarding the registration in your web site as team member and i would like to say you that I have a good understandable mind for knowing the things and I am capable to understand the things in a easier way because I love complicate and critical things but after serching the things my mind is putting so many questions regarding the search but I dont know that whose one to converte my questions into correct answers thats why I am participating you so kindly grant me and resister my request.
Thanks & Regards
Lalit Sharma
Big Deal talk to us when you figure out a way to stimulate the mind!
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